With an encounter in charge of the Directorate of the Latin American Center of Studies of the University of Auckland in New Zealand, Dr. Walescka Pino-Ojeda, the second version of the Diploma in Communication, Territory and Cultural Management was inaugurated last Saturday, August 22, a program organized jointly by the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, the Universidad de Chile and the Universidad de Los Lagos and which takes place virtually between August and December of this year.

In the inauguration participated the 39 students of the program, the Seremi of Culture, Arts and Heritage of the Los Lagos region, Paulina Concha, together with the Cultural Citizenship and Culture Network team, the Vice Chancellor of the Puerto Montt Campus of the Universidad de Los Lagos, Anita Dörner and the Director of the Institute of Communication and Image of the Universidad de Chile, Loreto Rebolledo.

This is the second version of a program that seeks to respond to one of the objectives of regional public policy on culture, which is related to the training of cultural agents, managers and artists in a free and quality academic program, whose teaching team is composed of academics from the universities of Chile and Los Lagos.

In this regard, the Seremi of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, Paulina Concha, expressed her satisfaction with the work done with the two public universities since the first version of the diploma, in 2019. “This new version of the Diploma in Communication, Territory and Cultural Management, has an institutional public vocation, since we managed to materialize a co-design of programs and projects that are born under the eaves of Participatory Public Policies in Culture, developed together with cultural communities, where one of the shortcomings and desires aimed to obtain academic tools.”

Regional participation

Thanks to the collaboration between three state institutions, this program will train 5 municipal culture managers, 2 municipal officials, 18 artists from various disciplines, 13 members of organizations, institutions or cultural spaces and 1 library manager, who work in the 4 provinces of the Los Lagos Region: 13 people from Chiloé, 7 from Osorno, 15 from Llanquihue and 4 from Palena.

Loreto Rebolledo, Director of the Institute of Communication and Image of the Universidad de Chile, said that it is essential to activate the founding mission of public universities in regions outside the Metropolitan, “especially when we talk about heritage and culture, because of the density they have in the different regions of the country. Courses like this not only have the grace of being designed together, but there is also a knowledge that flows bidirectionally between students and teachers.”

From the Universidad de Los Lagos, meanwhile, the Vice Rector of the Puerto Montt Campus, Anita Dörner, pointed out that as a result of the pandemic and the social crisis, the academic processes of the university have had to be completely virtualized, putting the regional territory to the test for its extensive and rugged geography, but it has also demanded the maximum from the university’s teams, to offer a program in the quality standard that its students deserve and that as a public institution is committed to delivering.

Sur-sur Dialog from the identity

After the protocolar greetings was the turn of the inagural dialog between the Director of the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Auckland, Director of the Centre for Latin American Studies at the University of Auckland, Dr. Walescka Pino-Ojeda and the 39 students who are part of the second generation of this diploma.

Under the title “Why art and culture? Ancestral and social memory towards the reformulation of the extensive community”, Dr. Pino-Ojeda started thanking the dialog to the three convening institutions the possibility of sharing their reflections with the new generation of students of the diploma: “Artists, managers, artisans of my own community”.

“The question contained in the title of my talk deliberately omits the word ‘serves’, because I refuse to maintain that Art and Culture serve any purpose. That is, they have a use value or a utility, instead of having their own value. Rather, I maintain that art and culture are the manifestation of the foundations on which we exist. Is the space where our history and communitary ethic are exhibited” Said the academic from Osorno.

Accordingly, Dr. Pino-Ojeda explains that it is fundamental to understand this conception to consider four aspects: memory, alienation, identity and extensive community. Regarding memory, he argued that there are three types particularly relevant to contextualize the diploma project: ancestral memory, which is the knowledge inherited from our communities and territories; social memory, which is transmitted by the protagonists of recent history; and the cultural memory that is built from culture (music, dance, ceramics, theater, etc.). It is immersed and enters into dialogue with social and ancestral memory, transmits and preserves it, but it can in turn question it in order to expand it and intervene in social processes.

“You are participating in a process of building a cultural memory. About the base of your memories, activities and experiences. The work you do helps us to overcome the alienation we have suffered from our ancestral memory, and therefore assists us in the recovery of our humanity, identity and dignity and, from this, to recover our deep community, which is the one that knows where it comes from and where it belongs. An extensive community where we recognize, respect and live in harmony with each other, and with the natural home that houses us,” concluded Dr. Walescka Pino-Ojeda

Check out the full inaugural dialogue athttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDNx-P4MYbU&t=419s